COLLABORATIVE MINISTRY

COLLABORATIVE MINISTRY

Part 1

There is only Holy Spirit who, through the sacrament of Baptism, confers on us the office of ministry. It was the same Spirit who came on Jesus at his baptism, confirmed him, drove him into the wilderness and then sent him forth in the service of reconcilement and healing. Will the Holy Spirit do any different with us who form one body with Christ? The service of healing and reconcilement and healing is given to all of us. We are indeed commissioned people, mandated by the same Spirit for the same ministry, though understandably with different nuances and levels dictated by our state of life. For example, the two social sacraments are marriage and priesthood, and both have the same ultimate aim, namely, to unite humanity to God. People need spiritual development and emotional sustenance. They expect the people of God to reach out and make them feel that they’re there and that they care. And they too are ready to reach out and help people themselves. “It’s the poor what helps the poor,” is a line from an old Irish playlet. A sort of mutual life support system.

 The Government can giver the money, but only people can help people to face life. For instance, the AIDS patient or swine flu’ patient is not a statistic, and the disease need not be labelled as a death sentence. St. Francis of Assisi, we are told, kissed the hand of a leper. Yet it was not Francis who healed the leper, but the leper who healed Francis! Healed him from his social prejudice and from keeping a clinical distance from isolated people. Francis of Assisi became a friar, not to hide within the walls of the monastery, but to be with the people. The prophets ascended the mountain to hear God’s word, there in the cloud - symbol of the divine presence. But they had to descend from the heights and go to the people, even if the people did not listen, even persecuted them. That is how the Gospel is preached: not from a position of power to the weak, but from a position of weakness to the powerful. We preach the Good News to those who are capable of crucifying us.

Like the classical prophets of Israel who went before him centuries earlier (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos), and like a few voices that have echoed through the corridors of history since John Baptist, he (John) condemned the selfish luxury that flourished alongside widespread impoverishment and economic oppression, the kind of sybaritic luxury that can lead to spiritual bankruptcy. A true Jewish prophet – a spokesman for the things of God, not a fortune-teller – the Baptist had the prophet’s sense of radical isolation. Jeremiah (in the seventh century before Jesus), preaching against religious indifference, felt that his calling was to be a thorn in the side of the smug. His vocation separated him from “merrymakers” and led him to certain apartness. “I sat alone,” Jeremiah said wistfully but without self-pity. That is a fair summary of the eight hundred years of prophetic tradition, from Isaiah to John the Baptist, when we come upon our  Lord Jesus Christ, the Priest and Prophet, in whom is contained the unimaginable forgiveness and faithfulness of God. 

Part 2

To a world that clamours for peace through domination and suppression, discipline from the barrel of a gun, police savagery, gagging the mouths of protesters, Our Lord shows the way of humility and service. Human suffering, again, is not an occasion for pessimism but a challenge to action in the belief that Christ’s Resurrection is already operating in the dark night of pain and hopelessness. As Christians and, indeed, as missionaries, we realise that we cannot successfully proclaim the Good News from a position of superiority. We can preach the Gospel effectively only when the people to whom we are sent have the power to crucify us. Precisely in his moment of uttermost weakness our High Priest shows his greatest strength. St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians has a wonderful cosmic sweep. In this short, rich letter Christ is shown defeating darkness, holding all things in unity and making it possible for us “to join the saints and with them to inherit the light.”

We Christians are inheritors of the light. This light must shine in new ways and in hitherto unlit places. Today ministry in the Christian Church exists in a new situation. Change in ministry – diversification, decline, and expansion – have followed upon the event of Vatican II and the social upheavals of the latter half of the 20^th. Century. These new paradigms in ministry were not planned in advance but are the result of the meeting of the Church and the world. The expansion of ministry, new church structures, a new evangelical vitality are part of a cultural upheaval whose roots lie in freedom, ministerial effectiveness, maturity and participation within the Church.

What we call “an explosion of ministry” is a worldwide phenomenon, affecting countries and churches differently. The renewal of the local church, priesthood, episcopacy, life in vows initiated by Vatican II led to the practical consequence of men and women shifting from one ministry to another. In truth, on account of a greater consciousness of personal freedom, Christians (including Catholics) are transferring their loyalties from one denomination to another. New ministries, e.g. health care, adult religious education, workers movements, prisons, permeating the civil services and government, and many others, have become new paths to ministry, along with that of priest, deacon and sister. As a result of these developments within and outside the churches, thousands of Christians have entered the ministry. An ordained ministry of bishops, priests and deacons may well be necessary for the efficient organisation and functioning of complex communities, like the proper celebration of the Eucharist and the spiritual needs of believers; but the officially ordained are no “higher” or “closer to God” than they were by virtue of baptism. God raises men and women whose entire lives are dedicated to the service of others, and not only as parochial standard-bearers but as social workers, teachers, preachers, hospice workers – wherever there are human needs and struggles.

What caused this explosion of ministry? Both society and church in our times led the ministry to seek out new activities and therein a new theology. The world is growing. The number of people living on this planet expands rapidly. At the same time, people are not content merely to subsist in a changeless life punctuated with moments of contentment, but they search for a fuller life. Quality in Christian life, as well as increase in population, and a search for freedom, are forces that have led Christians to expect wider ministries in their churches. The Church is caught between a flood of numbers and an individual quest for spiritual maturity. Today, the emphasis of theology is no more institutional but personal. We cannot do away with the institution, but the hermeneutic of the institutional is in terms of the personal. The dialectic of the institutional and personal is acquiring fresh nuances. The Triune God is personal. He gives himself and loves us personally, and we surrender ourselves to the Three Persons personally.